This page is devoted to
postcards and photographs of the Holyhead services of the London
& North Western Railway (LNWR). Joint service s with the
Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway from Fleetwood are shown on
Lancashire
& Yorkshire Railway - Page 1. An
alphabetical list of ships
shown on this page is shown below. The Table beneath gives links to complete history pages
on selected individual ships. Below the table is a Fleet List in chronological order.

Holyhead, on the Isle
of Anglesey, had been the Irish mail port since the time of Queen
Elizabeth I. At first mail was carried in privately owned sailing
ships, but the Post Office took over towards the end of the 19th
Century, running to Pigeon House Quay in Dublin. In 1918 the
Irish terminal changed to the new port of Howth, although it
proved to be unsuitable, and some services transferred to Dun
Laoghaire (known as Kingstown between 1821-1922) in 1827 on completion
of the East Pier. Howth ceased to be a mail terminal in 1834.
The City
of Dublin SP Co
started their service betwen Holyhead and Kingstown in 1828.
From 1839, the mainland ternimal moved from Holyhead to Liverpool,
which was connected to London by rail. The Chester and Holyhead
Railway (C&HR) was formed in 1842 to connect the port of
Holyhead to the country's growing railway network. They purchased
the first quartet of steamers named Anglia (1), Cambria
(1), Hibernia (1)andScotia
(1) in 1847/1848,
passengers initially travelling by coach from Bangor to Holyhead
across Telford's suspension bridge across the Menai Straits.
The Britannia railway bridge across the Straits was completed
in 1850, allowing through trains to run from Liverpool to Kingstown,
and the mail contract reverted to Holyhead. However, to the apparent
amazement of the railway company, the steamer mail contract was
given to the City
of Dublin SP Co
- the C&HR was so confident that they did not even bid. The
C&HR amalgamated with the LNWR in 1858, with the nine C&HR
steamers following in 1859. A revised mail contract with the
City of
Dublin SP Co was
reached in 1860, and the LNWR moved its Irish terminal to Dublin
North Wall until 1908.

The third quartet of railway
steamers were ordered in 1914 to challenge the City of Dublin SP Co when the mail contract was to
reviewed in 1915. Although work started on the first two ships,
the war caused the work to be stopped. The mail contract was
renewed annually in favour of the Dublin company until 1920,
when it finally passed to the LNWR. The Dublin company had lost
two of their ships in the war, and it was in a poor finacial
state, eventually being taken over by B&I. Work resumed on all four LNWR sisters in 1919,
and they were delivered in 1920/1921. The ships were extremely
fast, being capable of over 25 knots. They passed to the LMS
in 1923. Four ships proved to be an extravagence, and Anglia
(3) was laid up at Barrow. Relief was generally provided
by the Duke of Abercorn, and Anglia (3) received
little use before being scrapped in 1935. Hibernia (3)
was refitted in 1931 when the forward part of the promenade deck
was plated in. Her sisters Cambria (4) and Scotia (3)
followed suit in 1932. The were plans to replace them with new
turbine steamers in 1938, due to strong competion from the new
Leinster
(3) and Munster
(3) on the
Liverpool-Dublin overnight service of B&I. The orders were cancelled at the start of WW2.
Scotia (3) was lost at the Dunkirk evaquation in 1940,
whilst the surviving two sisters Cambria (4) and Hibernia
(3) remained on Irish Sea services throughout the war, with
Cambria (4) moving to the Heysham-Belfast route. Cambria
(4) returned to Holyhead after the war, but in 1947 fuel
crisis, the sisters were replaced by the more economical oil-fired
Princess Maud, running just one daily return service.
They returned to service later in the year, and passed to British
Railways on 1st January 1948, before being replaced by the new
motorships Cambria
(5) and Hibernia
(4) in 1949.

Postcard
of one the sisters at Dun Laoghaire.

Card
posted fron Dun Laoghaire in 1932.

Two
of the sisters at Kingstown (Dun Laoghaire).

Postcard
of Cambria (4) and Hibernia (3) at Holyhead.

Sankey
postcard of Anglia (3) being towed into Barrow for lay
up.

Official
LMS postcard of the remaining three ships, after Anglia (3)
had been withdrawn.